In most instant lottery ticket games, a set of tickets is imaged with play or prize value indicia under a scratch-off coating according to a predetermined prize structure. Typically, the prize structure consists of one or more large value prizes, a number of lesser value prizes and a large number of tickets that are not prize winners. The prize values in a game are distributed within the ticket population so that, in theory, each player has an equal chance to win one of the prizes. In the United States, lottery game providers typically produce lottery games that are divided up into pools where each pool has a prize structure. Each pool is then divided into a number of packs where each pack contains a preset number of lottery tickets. For example, a game might have several million tickets where each pool contains 240,000 tickets and each pool contains 800 books of 300 tickets. However, games can be organized in different ways and can, for example, consist of a set of packs not grouped into pools. Usually each individual pack of tickets, also termed books, is packaged by the game provider for delivery to the lottery administration or lottery sales agents.
The term “image” is a term that is commonly used by lottery ticket manufactures or game providers to indicate a system whereby variable indicia including ticket symbols such as play indicia and validation numbers are transferred onto the individual instant ticket as opposed to, for example, display printing which is the typical method of applying a common graphic to all the tickets in a game. Although these symbols are not technically printed on the ticket, it is common to use the terms imaged and printed interchangeably. This disclosure, as described below, is independent of whether symbols are imaged or printed.
Traditional instant ticket games are manufactured in the following manner: the lottery administration and the game provider design the game, game programmers and auditors create, test and approve instant ticket game software that is capable of accurately producing the game data file for a specific game.
The approved game software is transferred to a secured game production system where the software executes and produces the live instant ticket ‘game data file’. The file is encrypted and stored until press time at which time proprietary ink and lower security coatings are first applied to the paper, the game data is securely transferred to the paper using high-speed imaging systems and finally other inks and upper coatings are added to the paper to cover the game data and create an attractive ticket image.
These games are very popular and billions of tickets are sold annually. Traditional instant ticket games are games in which the winning and losing tickets are securely shuffled within the ‘game data file’. Such traditional instant ticket games are designated as ‘predetermined’ games because the game's data is created prior to a player choosing to purchase a ticket. In these games, software and algorithms that use a Random Number Generator (RNG) determine which tickets win a prize and which do not. In other types of games, the value of the ticket is determined when the player purchases a ticket; or the value of the ticket may be determined after the player makes some choice during the play of the game; or the value of the ticket is determined based on some other criteria or trigger.
In all cases, some form of game software or game hardware, using an RNG, must determine which tickets win and at what level they win. For the discussion of the present disclosure, it does not matter if the game is designated as ‘predetermined’ or not. The disclosure applies to all types of games that use an RNG to shuffle winners and losers or otherwise determine the value of a ticket purchased by a player regardless of whether the RNG is used to pre-determine the value of the ticket before the player purchases a ticket or determine the value of the ticket real-time during the actual play of the ticket.
The game data is primarily presented to the player in the form of game symbols—numbers, letters or other common symbols—used in combinations that create familiar or new types of games that are entertaining and offer some mechanism to determine if the player has chosen or purchased a winning or a losing ticket. Some games are games where numbers are compared to other numbers; some games are symbols compared to other symbols but in general the game symbols would be familiar just as card symbols or tic-tac-toe symbols are familiar and are used to entertain players as they play the games as well as, or more importantly, to indicate to the player whether or not the player's ticket is a winning ticket. This is comparable to a hand of cards that entertain the player but would also indicate that one player has won the hand over another player.
For traditional instant games, the production of the game's data is accomplished by software that executes on computer hardware and the result is a game data file that represents the entire game. The game data file may be subdivided into packs of tickets or simply tickets, but the subdivision is arbitrary and is useful in uniquely identifying each ticket, among other reasons. The subdivision is also useful so that players can purchase or otherwise obtain one or more tickets and play each ticket to determine if he has won a prize. The instant ticket game that is available to the players would also generally be subdivided into packs which could be further subdivided into tickets. Players would most generally purchase a single ticket or several tickets. In some cases, a player might choose to purchase an entire pack of tickets.
In other types of games (for example games that are played on the internet or on a mobile phone), the game data may not be subdivided into packs or tickets and the present disclosure does not depend on existence or non-existence of this subdivision. In addition, the data may not be stored in a file; rather the individual game symbols that comprise a particular ticket or comprise a particular play of a game may be generated real-time by software and presented to the player the moment after he chooses to play the game; or the moment after the player takes some action. It must be reiterated that the present disclosure is relevant to these games as well as games that are considered ‘pre-determined’, in which (by definition) a file of game data is created prior to the player purchasing a ticket.
Typically, RNGs, as known to those of skill in the art, are used by the software to determine which symbols appear on the tickets and therefore which tickets win or lose. An RNG can be based on a hardware device in which the device is designed to use some type of external stimuli to create an unpredictable mixture of numbers; or an RNG can be based on software, which would typically be referred to as a ‘pseudo random number generator’ (pRNG). In either case, the result of the RNG is an unpredictable and unbiased string of outputs, typically numbers. The present disclosure applies to both software and hardware based RNGs. The resulting string of unpredictable and unbiased numbers could be used by the game generation software to determine which tickets win and at what level they win or more generally, the resulting string of numbers could be used for any number of purposes known to those of skill in which random numbers determine the outcome of an event. Therefore, the output of a game's RNG is critical because it provides the basis for unpredictable and unbiased winners in the game. The output would also be critical in any of a number of systems or process whereby the RNGs output determines the course of events in a manner that is as unbiased and unpredictable as possible.
Integral to the operation of the RNG is the input to the RNG itself: known as a ‘seed’. All random number generators require an input seed number or seed number set to initialize the random number generation algorithm. The RNG seed is typically an integer used to initialize the starting point for generating the series of random numbers produced by the RNG. The seed initializes the generator to a random starting point, and each unique seed returns a unique random number sequence. Typically, a seed number is introduced to the RNG which initializes the RNG and the resulting output is a sequence of unpredictable numbers that are further used by the game software for various purposes; and for this discussion, the output sequence of numbers is used to determine an unpredictable sequence of winning and losing tickets. However, the use of the RNG should not be considered limited to this one aspect. It can therefore be concluded that the security of the seeds used by the RNG is vital to the security of a game, namely the confidentiality and integrity of the mixture of winning and losing tickets.
Any one individual who might have unrestricted access to the game generation software as well as similar access to the game's RNG and seeds can use these components to produce the entire game and then illicitly determine which tickets or game plays win, along with their exact value without having to actually purchase a ticket or a game play. It is common in the instant ticket industry to separate the RNG seeds from the game software; or to encrypt the seeds; or to otherwise secure or segregate the seeds from the game software. These controls generally ensure that at least two persons would have to collaborate in order to create the actual and live game data. It is the intent of this disclosure to further secure and segregate the game's RNG seeds from the game software.
It must be noted that for these types of games, it is required by the lottery administration that the game software be able to reproduce the ticket data for a contractually specified period of time after the game has been delivered to the lottery administration. This is required because there may be disputes about the intended winning prize on a ticket or a ticket may be damaged or packs may be stolen from a retail location; or there may be disputes about a particular game play on the internet. In these and other cases, the lottery administration may require an exact reproduction of the ticket, which would be provided by the game provider system.
As part of the manufacturing process, the game provider images onto each paper ticket: game symbols (play indicia), ticket identification data (or inventory data) and ticket validation data. Game symbols are as described previously. Ticket identification data includes serial data which can include the game number, the pack number and the ticket number. This data sequentially numbers each pack and each ticket in the game. Validation data includes a unique validation number used to uniquely identify each ticket independently of the unique identification provided by the serial number. The validation number is usually an encrypted number that is used by a lottery administration system to determine if the ticket is a winner when it is redeemed by a player.
One method of producing instant ticket games is termed ‘single pass security’. In this method, there is a defined relationship between the ticket identification data and the validation number imaged on each lottery ticket. This relationship may be algorithmic or may be a file or a set of files that relate the ticket identification data to the validation number. In “single pass security”, there are discrete methods to determine the ticket's value based on either (1) the ticket identification data or (2) the validation number. For example, one could use the ticket identification data as an input to the game reconstruction software to determine the ticket's value. One could also use the ticket's validation number as input to determine the ticket's value.
Another method, termed ‘Keyed Dual Security’ or ‘KDS’, is an instant ticket programming and manufacturing process where there is no link between the ticket identification data and the ticket validation data. This disconnection results in a secure environment such that neither the game generation software (or the game reconstruction software) can reproduce valid information relating the ticket identification data to the value of the printed tickets.
One approach employed with respect to KDS is to employ a shuffling routine using a shuffle key that is created by the lottery administration and is unknown by the game provider. This shuffle key may be used as an input variable to independently shuffle the pack numbers in a pool after they are computer generated by the game generation software during game data production. In other words, the game provider's game generation software produces a set of packs containing inventory, play and validation data which is then re-shuffled in a separate process that is controlled by a confidential lottery shuffle key. The shuffle key is unknown to the game provider and in this manner, the lottery administration, via their key, controls the separate pack shuffling process that assigns the final value to each pack of tickets.
The result is a set of identification numbers imaged on the tickets that are now completely unknown to the game generation software and the game reconstruction software. In this approach, the lottery-generated shuffle keys are maintained within a specialized and secured server that is operated by an independent trusted third party who monitors the keyed dual security game data production activity on behalf of the lottery administration.
Since the game provider maintains control of the initial data generation and the lottery maintains control of the final re-shuffle, neither the lottery nor the game provider can know the value of a pack unless they cooperate. In this manner, the possibility of anyone on either the provider's or the lottery administration's staff of being able to illicitly identify winning lottery tickets by using ticket identification data imaged on the tickets is substantially reduced.
It is critical to note that Keyed Dual Security—the process in which there is a separate and second step of re-shuffling the game data after the initial generation of the data has significant disadvantages. For example, in an automated printing assembly, certain types of games must physically conform to or match a specific type of printing mechanism. For instance, lottery tickets of varying sizes or lottery tickets with different game themes or graphics, which may require for example special or specific inks, can only be printed by certain printing devices. If the pack number of the group of tickets is shuffled, not only is the game information related to the tickets intentionally obscured for security purposes, but the type and form of tickets present within the pack is obscured as well. Thus, packs of tickets that may have been required to print on a particular print channel or path on the printing press may be shunted, as part of the keyed dual security process, to a printing channel or path where the printing mechanism is unsuitable for printing that particular pack. Unusable or damaged tickets result, creating not only waste but also requiring that these packs of tickets and the corresponding information for same be removed from the lottery system data domains as the tickets were not actually generated and therefore cannot be distributed.
Also, the KDS system may also cause issues with reconstructing ticket information as some reconstruction methods require an exact image of the original ticket, and printing discrepancies caused by shuffling the pack numbers may interfere with the reconstruction.
What is needed is a security system in which there is no additional or second shuffle. Additionally, a security system is needed that provides an improved method for generating the final game which includes a single shuffle using a secret final game generation seed that is comprised of multiple key or seed fragments. Further, the security system in which each key fragment is securely combined to form a final game key or seed and the process of combining the key or seed fragments needs to be transparent such that all key or seed holders consent and are aware that their respective fragment is being used to form the final key or seed. What is further needed is a system that assures all parties that their respective secret key(s) or seeds are required to produce the final game generation key or seed, which is in turn used to construct the game data used for game entries.